The F-Word

See, for starters, I’m tall. Six feet three, and that’s without wearing my old, trusty roper boots. No, I’m not a cowboy. I just like roper boots. They work if I’m riding my Harley or driving the classic ’Vette that I restored, and they’re perfect if I have to pop onto a job site.

Where was I?

Chromosomes. Right. Well, mine gave me dark hair, kind of an inky black color. Blue eyes. Fairly regular features. And for the past couple of years I’ve had what my Mom calls facial fuzz.

I also have this series of tattoos on my left arm and shoulder. Got them done years ago, in Kathmandu. Women seem to find them a turn-on, but I didn’t get them for that reason…

More about that later.

Did I mention I’m in construction? And design. O’Malley Design and Construction. That’s me. Maybe you’ve heard of us. If you live in the New York City suburbs, it’s a good bet that you have…

Where was I?

We were talking about genetics. DNA. The fact that I’m not bad looking.

Okay. I’m good looking.

A guy stopped me on the corner of Madison and 47th last month. Said I reminded him of Liam Hemsworth and was I interested in a new career.

This made for two problems.

The first was that I almost killed the poor bastard.

I grabbed him by his necktie and hauled him to his toes before he could choke out that he wasn’t hitting on me. He was an agent for a modeling agency. Yeah, I know. Gay pride. The Rainbow Coalition. I’m all for everybody’s civil rights, including my right to be a heterosexual male.

The second problem was that after I’d dusted him off, attempted to straighten his tie and said thanks but no thanks to the idea of becoming a male model, I had to pop into the Starbucks up the block, take out my iPhone and check to see who Liam Hemsworth is.

An actor, it turns out. An Aussie. And, okay, I can see the similarities. We’re both tall, blue-eyed, square-jawed. Hemsworth looks as if he works out. I don’t, unless you call running or playing soccer on Sundays in Central Park or occasionally swinging a hammer or loading pallets at one of my construction sites a workout.

I kind of like to keep my hand in, so to speak.

And my hair’s darker than this Liam guy, but you get the picture.

I look okay.

And—do you hear me knocking on wood? I have a good life.

Nice family, st

arting with my mom and dad. He’s a retired contractor. He owned his own business—small, not big, but he had a rep for being the guy you wanted if you wanted a job done right. I worked for him during the summers from the time I was fourteen straight through college.

Well, almost straight through.

The summer I graduated from college, I didn’t work for him.

More about that later. Maybe.

Because, you know, this isn’t a trip down memory lane. I’m just trying to give you some background so you can understand how I got myself into this situation.

Mom’s an English teacher. She’s retired too, but you say something dumb like him and me and she’ll look you straight in the eye and tell you it’s he and I. When I was in my teens and she did that to my buddies, even though she did it nicely, I wanted to crawl away and die. Here’s the best way to tell you what kind of mom she is—she figured out that those polite corrections just about killed me and she stopped doing it. At least, she let me think she’d stopped doing it. Years later, friends admitted she’d wait until she was alone with whatever kid had just tried to murder the English language and she’d gently offer the correction, and you know what?

They all said they’d been grateful.

I have a sister. Casey. She’s two years older than I am—you didn’t really think I’d say she was two years older than me, did you? We hated each other through elementary school, middle school and part of high school. Then I turned sixteen and she turned eighteen and we looked at each other and saw two human beings instead of two siblings, and we’ve been close ever since. She’s married now, to a terrific guy, and I already mentioned the little niece who owns my heart…

See?

No joke. I really am a nice guy. And okay looking.